On Saturday morning I went through to Umthombo, a safe house for street children, to donate some surfboards and shoot some pics of the kids receiving them for Mahala. You can read more about the surf program Mahala are running, here. It really is a great program and I encourage all of you with old boards or wetsuits to donate them.

Umthombo seeks to get kids off the streets, drugs, violence etc and reintegrate them into society, family or schools. Speaking to Tom, the CEO, he informed me that they reintegrate around 200 kids per year. He also told us of the shocking approach our municipality/police to “clean” up the city for the World Cup. Basically the cops round up children, drive an hour down the coast and just drop them off where the children without any other hope have to walk all the way back. Shocking!

One part of Umthombo’s program involves teaching the kids how to repair and surf surfboards and with the program quite advanced now one of the kids is even being looked at for sponsorship. The trip was a real soul booster and I need to say big ups to Tom for his amazing work. Here are some portraits of the kids:

As far as sisters go Belle’s a keeper. Also known as Kell Skull in some circles this dame is as fine a friend as you could hope to meet. She sealed our kinship with the saying “if RnB had a face I’d punch it!” She’s full of grab-you-by-the-nuts one liners and she shits steez…serious. Her stoole contains more style than that mountain down south everyone rates.

So Elle Decoration are doing a piece on people’s favourite locally made design pieces and Kell wanted to show her couch. We had been talking about shooting something similar to this but with more planning and a better suited location but decided to bash this out quick today for their deadline. This is part one of the adventures of Belle and her couch….

Recently I got to shoot the Lily Bird Winter 2010 Range. Lily Bird is a durban based clothing label exclusive to YDE stores and they have just revamped their website with the pics from our shoot. Still a relatively new brand they are growing from strength to strength. The team running the brand are so positive and are having so much fun with the brand which made working with them so great. It was just one of those days where everything seems to go right. The best kind of days. I had so much fun on this shoot and am really looking forward to doing more exciting stuff with them in the future.

So on May 08, 2010 I married the most beautiful girl on earth. The former Miss Bruniquel and now upgraded Mrs Lisa Bradley. I had to at least shoot one pic at the wedding and here it is. Despite world cup fever the weather just wasn’t amped to play ball [oh the cheese] but we made the most of it and shared the most magical day with our nearest and dearest. Needed to get this one up.. now to catch up on work and get blogging again. Cheers xx

Carrying on from the previous post… Verb who are a Joburg based South African skateboarding brand who are working with of the minute local artists to put out some really amazing product and prints. I have been lucky enough to shoot two of their adverts for them. One skateboarding, the other Activist Art. I have had a great time working with both Simon Stipcich (skater) and Wesley Van Eeden on these and am hoping to get to do more with them in the future. Go check out their site…